Hi all,
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, but with the introduction of Powered Cube to MTG Arena, I had some thoughts I wanted to get down with regards to how I approach / view drafting these formats since I’ve had a lot of time (due to the government furlough). I’m currently around ~top 200 Mythic in Limited at the moment, but I generally play a LOT of MTGO Vintage Cube as well as other formats.
There’s a reasonable amount of overlap between the MTGO Vintage Cube and MTGA Powered Cube, (they’re both 540 card cubes, with a difference of 106 cards at the moment as of November 3, 2025).
Philosophically, I think the major difference between this sort of Cube and ‘regular’ retail Limited or even other Cubes is that the idealized version of decks are extremely strong.
Having a vision of what a deck looks like can make ‘hard’ decisions within the draft a lot easier.
To begin with, in the early picks of the draft, there’s some cards that are just MUCH more powerful than others.
Examples of these include: 5 Moxen, Black Lotus, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Ancestral Recall, Time Walk.
The second tier of cards that are close to these (in my opinion) are cheap / zero mana spells: Swords to Plowshares, Solitude, Snuff Out, Lightning Bolt, Karakas (basically a removal spell on a land), Force of Will and Ragavan Nimble Pilferer.
You should strive to take these p1p1 and navigate into a deck that supports them (moxen/lotus/sol ring/mana crypt basically go into all decks).
There are other roleplayer cards that are excellent directions to go if you want to speculate on them such as:
Flash, Tinker, Entomb, Underworld Breach, etc.
Note the fail rate of taking these cards p1p1 is a bit higher, but in the proper shell(s), these cards are among the best cards in your deck.
If you are fortunate to open a pack with multiple pieces of power and/or Sol Ring/Mana Crypt, I do think Black Lotus is probably the best of the bunch, but you can’t go too wrong taking any of them.
Some notable archetypes (based on 17 lands / my personal experience):
Boros Aggro
Control / Midrange Blue
Artifacts
Reanimator
Multicolor Green
Other Combo (underworld breach)
Deck types (in no particular order):
Boros aggro:
This is the easiest / most effective deck to draft, and the 17lands data certainly agrees with it.
This deck seeks to end the game quickly with efficient threats, but (ideally) doesn’t sacrifice card quality by playing good rate creatures up the curve.
Key cards: cheap removal (such as Swords to Plowshares / Lightning Bolt), efficient threats (Ragavan, Ajani Nacatl Pariah).
When you draft this deck, if you lack fast mana, I’d pay very close attention to your mana curve and try to not have too many four / five mana spells. If you think a pick is close, taking the cheaper card will work out much better for you.
Example deck from the MTGO Cube somewhat recently (splashing fire covenant, and has multiple pieces of fast mana):
Multicolor Green (can be rampy, might not be, and subset of this is Nadu combo):
This deck seeks to play all of the best cards (usually in 3 colors at least, and definitely can go ‘domain’ or all 5 colors) via mana fixing provided by green.
Key cards: 1 drop accelerants (birds of paradise is the best since it lets you splash more colors, but then both noble / ignoble hierarch are good here because it also opens up more options for splashing). Any good card that’s easy to splash (if you’re not blue, but you open time walk / ancestral recall, just take it, and spend a few picks to make sure you can cast them).
Note, there’s a few ways to combo with Nadu in this cube, but the most efficient ones are Lightning Greaves, Bristly Bill, Scythecat Cub, and Sylvan Safekeeper. A sneaker way to trigger Nadu a few times is Umezawa’s Jitte (which is also incidentally good versus aggro decks). If you want to ‘one shot’ with Nadu in the same turn cycle, it’s doable via Gaea’s Cradle + Ulvenwald Oddity given the correct setup.
The ideal version of Nadu version of this deck to me would contain the following cards:
A bunch of manafixing lands (tropical island and a few fetchlands)
3-ish 1 drop accelerants (birds / noble hierarch would be ideal)
Lightning Greaves
Scythecat Cub/Bill/Safekeeper
Nadu
Green Sun’s Zenith.
Besides these, drafting generally good interactive cards / removal / card draw will make your deck stronger.
The multi color green version looks similar but the emphasis is on:
1 drop accelerants (birds / noble / ignoble)
Any good cards that cost 2-4 (Fable is nice here on the splash, but there’s PLENTY of good 3 drops you can splash here)
Good cheap interaction
Manafixing lands that matches the color of the good cards you want to cast (some mix of fetchland/triomes/duallands/surveillands)
A less than ideal version of the multi color green deck from a 7 win arena deck:
Again, I want to reiterate: If you think a pick is close, taking the cheaper card will work out much better for you.
‘Control’ (or ‘midrange’) Blue:
This deck seeks to extend the game and win with card quality and late game threats while your oppt draws cards that don’t do much in the late game. Wraths tend to line up well versus the Boros aggro menace.
There’s a few decks that fall into this category, but specifically I think if your deck contains sweepers like Wrath of God / Toxic Deluge / Damnation, you’re more likely to end up in ‘Control’ Blue, but the line is blurred once you have those and small creatures.
I think you can normally end up in this deck by seeing a lot of the good two mana counterspells in blue, such as Mana Leak, Miscalculation, and Remand. Mana Drain is powerful if you are able to cast it, but you probably need 10+ blue sources in your deck to support it.
In Dimir specifically, Psychic Frog is probably the biggest draw to the deck and is more likely to make you ‘Midrange’ as opposed to a pure control deck.
AGAIN: If you think a pick is close, taking the cheaper card will work out much better for you.
Example of a Dimir Deck that also fits the general idea I have for this sort of deck:
The upheaval is not ideal here, but this deck does contain a bunch of ‘broken’ cards (including Time Walk, and Sheoldred the Apocalypse to hose certain decks).
Artifacts:
This deck is generally centered around using Tolarian Academy and Urza’s Saga to their fullest potential. Tolarian Academy being a land that taps for at least 2 mana, if not 5+ in the late game means you get an Ancient Tomb for very low cost. Tolarian Academy plus Retrofitter Foundry is literal exponential growth (and will result in an opponent dying within a few turns assuming you have a reasonable amount of starting mana). You’re generally base blue, but you don’t want all of the same cards that other blue decks want.
In particular, Balance overperforms here, and this is an excellent home for Tinker (plus the other expensive artifacts to tinker into like Portal to Phyrexia).
Key cards: Any artifact that costs 0 or 1 that has any effect.
Urza’s Saga will output 2 large creatures and tutor up a useful card in this deck (Retrofitter Foundry is nice, as is Expedition Map to find Tolarian Academy).
Grim Monolith.
Less intuitive is that Tezzret Cruel Captain can shine here, providing another way to cheaply untap Grim Monolith (also quite a strong card).
An underrated card in specifically this deck is Candelabra of Tawnos if you have Tolarian Academy, although it also lets you ‘double up’ on construct making off Urza’s Saga if you have a lot of mana.
It’s not unreasonable to put 1 or 2 expensive artifacts in your deck here with the intention of casting them off the Tolarian Academy tapping for 5+ mana (Portal to Phyrexia, Sundering Titan, Myr Battlesphere) (but these are not essential to the deck).
An ideal version of this deck contains:
Many cheap artifacts that cost 0-2
Tolarian Academy
Urza’s Saga
Any power card. Timetwister is fine in these decks but the other 8 power cards are obviously much better
Reanimator:
This deck seeks to put a creature into the graveyard and use a reanimation spell quickly to cheat a big creature out.
Key cards: Entomb, cheap disruption (thoughtseize / inquisition of kozilek / duress / daze / force of will / spell pierce), quality big creatures (Archon of Cruelty and Atraxa Grand Unifier are best, Etali is fine, and a few others are fine), Reanimate / Animate Dead, Vampiric Tutor / Demonic Tutor / Imperial Seal.
In the arena cube, there is no shallow grave or corpse dance, so the Eldrazi don’t work super well here. Often you will be Rakdos or Dimir (red for sneak attack or faithless looting, blue for psychic frog). This deck can be sort of midrangy and happen to reanimate one of your own big creatures or something you’ve removed / discarded on their side (since Reanimate / Necromancy / Animate Dead can target any creature in any graveyard).
Of course there are many other decks you can draft in the cube, and I encourage you to find them! This is just meant to be a ‘quick guide’ / introduction to the notion of Powered Cube with maybe a bit more nuance than normally is given.
Thanks for reading.
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